A Court of Honey and Ash (Honey and Ice, #1)

by Shannon Mayer

Then this wasn’t a ‘collect the happy coins as a team’ gig. It was a ‘get a coin or you’re out on your ass.’

Well hopefully more than Bracken left out of the 24 of them.

I stripped out of my clothes and dropped my weapons to the wet sand.

But your copper coin is being left behind…

I yanked my belt off and tied it around my leg, then swam below the creature’s bulbous, pink body to the chest.

How does she have a belt when she stripped off her clothes already?

Rowan was the eighth to fly the nest. He trudged out of the water empty-handed with his head hung low.

I hope no one can take anyone else coin because her sitting there knowing how many of them there are and how many coins there were is like asking for it. Yarrow already stabbed her.

“Those with three coins will enter into the Elite of the Seelie. You will receive training in the area of your choosing, along with a stipend, your own home, a crest, and two human servants.”

Nice!

I had three coins. I’d be an Elite.

That is unless Rowan took your first coin when he joined them after the sea one…

“I knew they wouldn’t do it.” Rowan sidled up to me. “They wouldn’t cast us out, not with fae numbers so low and human numbers so high.” He was not trying to talk to me after pulling that crap.

Lol

I held out my right hand, and she pricked the palm with the tip of a crystal knife. The blood climbed up the blade. “Swear your oath now, Kallik,” she said in a softer voice. “And may the goddess help us for what comes after.”

So her blood went UP the blade and then the Oracle spoke with her in a gentler voice…🤔 Who are you Alli?

Lifting my head, near panic, I stared at the man on the bridge . . . To find him staring back at me.

Is that your dad?

I shrugged. “I think fae scare a lot of people.” I knew that they scared my mother. She’d kept me as far from that boundary between us and them for as long as she could.

How is she even making sense? Her mother CLEARLY was intimate with a fae male in order for her to even exist… unless it was against her mother’s will. But can’t be if she taught her the language AND took her to see their cultural festivities…

A bastard left by her father’s guards at an orphanage.

So the royal dude WAS her father? Or…

case. But with Unimak being the official residence of the Seelie king, maybe some of them—like Bracken, and possibly Rowan—would visit from wherever they ended up.

So yep, the King was her father. Stepmom tried to have her killed back at that lake…

That’s why I’d always imagined this moment would be filled with triumph and vindication and feelings of acceptance and equality.

Oooohhh. I can’t wait until Yarrow learns who her father is. His House was one below hers. Ah! And that explains why the Oracle said “Kallih of ‘No House’” like that! She lied when making her oath! But why wouldn’t that occur to her?

I’d gone into Underhill believing that I would survive, believing that I would come out on top—one of very few women to ever do so. I had, except now, I hadn’t.

So… wouldn’t they have had to give their approval for this, for her to even go there? Does she not realize that they had to allow it? Them being who they are, she could have easily been locked away…

and after everything, I couldn’t recall what I’d blindly written down.

Not logical at all…

This was the same old crap I’d grown up with. If it wasn’t last-minute exclusions from festivities that all other Seelie were invited to, it was jeering comments from her on my shabby dresses during parades when no one else could hear. It was glares when no one else was looking. It was ordering her guards to use their magic to push and jostle and make me look like a fool after she’d passed through—just

So how is it no one knows she exists?

Like a favorite coat, I’d already slipped back into our friendship, but that didn’t mean I could tell her everything.

How in the hell? She’s been gone since 12 years old and no one wondered anything about the child prior to that? Oh wait, she did say her father put her in an orphanage. Never mind.

. if her parents hadn’t lost their minds and tried to slaughter some of my father’s guards ten years back.

Can’t wait to read that backstory…

She’d started out four years older, but we were both twenty-four now.

Oh! I see my mistake. She said she’s not the same 16 year old and for some reason I assumed she was now 16 and meant that she was wiser…

Right at the back, completely bereft of sunlight, sat 666 First Tier.

Ok, now her comment about “666” makes sense.

I’d tried to tell her on multiple occasions, but someone must have put a magical binding on me when I was young. No matter how hard I tried, the words just wouldn’t come out.

Oh ok. Now it makes sense… but “someone” should obviously be her jealous stepmother… I wonder if that’s also how her mom actually died…

and I strode to the table to pick up my ‘Welcome Ho’ sign

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I just realized that’s what it says now!

And yes, I’d had a major teenage crush on the much older guy with the brooding good looks. Classic bad boy.

Must be the one who saved her…

My eyes widened and I squinted at him in earnest.

Lots of facial expressions going on here with the eyes…

“She’s a mutt,” a boy said from next to me. Rowan. He’d been here for years. Longer than me. And he settled upon generosity or ruthlessness at random.

Well damn… poor kid.

“Faolan. Grandson of Lugh.” My jaw bobbed. “Of Lugh? The Lugh?”

Didn’t she send a prayer to Lugh earlier… or someone did, as if he was a god?

The older I got, the more distance he put between us, which had only made my crush ten times worse.

Because he liked you too boo…

sixteen-year-old drunk me from making a fool of herself. I groaned, recalling the last time we’d seen each other, at the one pub that stretched across the river and allowed Seelie and Unseelie on the premises at the same time.

At 16?

“Last night before I die, and you’re the hottest guy on Unimak, which means we need to talk.”

Lordt! What a pick up line!

except it didn’t feel quite like I’d expected. Weird shape. Squishy. Opening my eyes, I stared at his left eye. Which I’d apparently just kissed.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 This damn girl!

“Yes, my queen.” Oh, shit. Queen Elisavana was across the river? I crouched lower so I could peek through the bottom of the tree’s dangling branches.

So it seems the Queens of the courts are really the ones that run shit…

“Seems to me you’d want to apologize. As is our custom for when someone makes a fool of themselves.” Ah, fuck, he was going to talk about it, wasn’t he? The eye kiss.

🤣🤣🤣🤣 The Eye Kiss! It even has a name! 🤣🤣🤣

“Hmm.” That rumble from his chest was all male ego. “Here I was thinking you’d want to improve on our last kiss. See if you can aim your mouth a little lower.” The asshole laughed.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

The double meaning was not lost on me.

🤣🤣🤣 It was definitely lost on me until you said that!

It hadn’t been long after I’d fallen through the ice that she’d died. I’d woken up one morning and found her asleep in her chair near the dead fire.

Yep. The Queen killed her right after finding out about your existence…

To pull on all my outside clothes and make my way to the place that was warm—where the pretty people lived.

Why to them? Why not to the elders or whomever it was her mom was speaking to when she snuck off?

It had been Faolan who’d found me at the edge of the boundary.

Of course it was… why is it always him lurking at the border?

He’d taken me to the orphanage, holding my hand, speaking softly to me. As if he cared.

So why’d he look shocked when he saw her there if he’s the one that had taken her there to begin with.

There was a certain honesty to that I could get behind.

Same.

Magic wasn’t as second nature to me as it was for a full-blooded fae—just like the ability to hold our breath for longer periods of time underwater—but

Shouldn’t it be though? She’s spent more years as fae than she has as human. Or rather in the fae world than the human one, leaving the latter before 5 years old.

She looked at each of us in turn, and I wondered if she could tell I still had no idea what ‘vocational area’ to choose. We fell into a single file line behind her, and I took up the last spot gladly, scanning the huge and empty halls we passed.

She needs to find out where Yarrow is going so he won’t pick there at least…

Yarrow swaggered onto the stage and claimed the position closest to the two thrones. He waved to some of the nearby tables, calling out to them and winking.

Didn’t she just say to wait for the King?

We will begin with the Middling Seelie. Birk, Fern, and Aspen, step forward.”

Didn’t Rowan also have two coins though? He got the 1st one WITH Alli and the 2nd one in the sea.

Alli, you’re so beautiful! I didn’t know a person’s back had that many muscles either. Interesting.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Her grin was so wide it pulled at her burn. “Faolan who was eye-kissed by you?” “Yes,” I said dryly. She whacked me lightly. “Is he still hot? Did you talk? Did you kiss his other eye to make up for lost time?”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I love her!

I spotted the queen consort delivering an order to the old trainer with a snap of her fingers. This man had guided me through the last eight years, and now he was handing me over at the damn finish line. His eyes drifted to the nearest guards, but he made no move other than to nod in reply and bow again.

I feel like this lady has some kind of mind control over the king or something shady like that…

My stepmom knew or at least suspected, courtesy of Bres, that I was the one who’d shattered Underhill.

Shouldn’t that mean you’re more powerful than you think? I mean, your FATHER is the KING, she’s the queen through marriage only. Surely you’re bloodline, no matter if diluted a bit, is more powerful than others.

His gaze was impenetrable, but I gathered one thing from the haste with which he looked away.

Yeah, I feel like she’s controlling him.

No. Something had destroyed the fae realm, and regardless of whether I was actually at fault, I had to figure out how to get it back.

I just reread the oath. So I think when she made the oath, binding herself or her power to Underhill to protect the king or something (my daughter just made me forget the words I just read), she actually brought that power from the place into herself, as his descendant?

“You don’t think anyone else noticed you running through here? The others will tell on you faster than a fat kid squeals for candy.”

Exactly! And she asked her to hide her in earshot of a ton of other fae! Logic Police?